Oksana Zabuzhko - The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

“I did, sure. I actually think that’s his greatest fear as far as Nika goes. Lest she find out that her grandmother killed herself, I mean…. He let something slip about a curse, remember?”

“Of course, and Nika’s another thing…. He is making her your responsibility, no? Didn’t you see—passing her on to you, so to speak, as your inheritance! For you to take her as your friend, or who knows what… your charge. By the same old curatorial logic, from the KGB. So basically, he and you have your own story. And I’m just sitting there, pouring vodka into plastic cups. Meanwhile, it was his old man who carried out my great-aunt’s death sentence—and Boozerov has been aware of this ever since I first submitted my inquiry to the archives, last fall. But if it weren’t for his daughter, the concert—like hell he would’ve told us this. Or that Gela was pregnant.”

“You know, I can’t shake that off—this must have been done in some office of theirs, right? The examination, the analysis of the remains…. It was someone’s job to do that, can you imagine? Collect the mangled bodies, sort them: ours over here, the other side’s—over there… the mother here, the fetus—separately, over there….”

“Hang on, you’ll make me lose my point. It’s not the different pieces, as you said, that are patched together—it’s as if there were three different processes, and all of them nonlinear, oscillatory, a wave system—the Schrödinger equation. That’s why he’s out of focus, you know, that’s why he sort of… flickers—there are more dimensions than you or I can each individually perceive. Do you understand?”

“Honestly, no.”

“Okay, did you take advanced geometry in school? Do you remember how to represent a three-dimensional object on a two-dimensional plain?”

“Draw three different views, from three sides?”

“Something like that. So what I’m saying, it’s the same here. The world I—we—live in has fewer dimensions than we need to get an accurate representation of the process, so all we get is a set of random views, and not even a complete set. And the views you get don’t match the ones I get—like, say, if you had the front view, and I got the plane view… and I don’t fall into your dimension, I’m not inside that field.”

“Meaning what?”

“I’m just a go-between, Lolly. Like a semiconductor, you see? And occasionally, a catalyst. And that’s how it’s been for me the whole time, from the beginning: I function as an add-on to your project. Your project that involves my family and for which you needed a guide. A go-between…”

“Weird…”

“No shit.”

“No, it’s weird because sometimes I feel precisely the opposite. That it’s my project that functions as a go-between—between you and me.”

“And I’ve had enough of this going between. I want there to be the two of us, together, and no one else. I want to be your man, period. Your husband, not a go-between. Do you see the difference, or do I have to explain that too?”

“You goof… that’s who you are.”

“I’m not sure, baby. I’m not sure.”

“I am. You cover me. You have my back, all the time; you don’t even notice it because it comes so naturally to you. This is why you got so worked up, too—because you took the whole Pavlo Ivanovych, the brunt of him, and now the aftershock of it is rattling you.”

“Hm. You think?”

“Can’t you feel it yourself?”

“I don’t know…. He really got under my skin, that’s for sure. Like I got some virus from him and it went running through my bones—smashing everything in its way… bowling. And on top of that, I had to swallow it all as I listened. Just think: I’ve been working like a fucking ox for seven years, kissing up to God-knows-who, fighting for every little old tchotchke tooth and nail, trying to save at least a bit of our past, and underwriting the SBU’s fucking budget with my hard-earned coin on top of that; and there he sits, paid, again, with my hard-earned coin—after he burned the archives! And the thing is—he’s still convinced he did the right thing, and you can’t get through to him!”

“Leave him alone, Aidy, others have gotten through already—left plenty of holes in him. He’s a colander.”

“Sure, someone tells you a sob story about his difficult childhood, and you’re ready to feel sorry for him!”

“Someone has to do that, too, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, yeah. Alright, don’t take it the wrong way.”

“I’m not. All I’m saying is he didn’t have any other choice. None of them did—those who were raised on lies, with the natural course of life violated. Arbitrarily warped. Can you imagine what a flimsy existence he must lead—without roots, up in the air? A sort of a show that he plays for himself over and over and over. And there’s no way to keep it going other than to guard, sledgehammer in hand, against the natural order of things reasserting itself, because if you miss a blink—it’ll break through, like mud through that dam….”

“Yeah.”

“His dam will break too, one day… and sweep away the whole house of cards he’s worked so hard to build around his child. It’s leaking already—first his mother-in-law, then it’ll be something else: the further his child ventures into the world, the more risks there are. That’s why he’s so afraid.”

“So much wisdom. So much understanding. Where can I get myself some of that?”

“Why? You disagree?”

“You women just kill me… just sit there, philosophizing, like it’s all water off a duck’s back!”

“It’s all because you covered me. Shielded me bravely with your own body, you could say. Took the brunt of the negative-energy assault. Or, maybe more appropriately, of the informational assault?”

“You just keep kissing up to me…”

“I’m not kissing up; I’m telling you like it is. You are my hero. My knight in shining armor. My Chip and Dale. My Ninja Turtle.”

“Shut up. You’re mean.”

“But wise—you said so yourself.”

“You know I’ve got a whale of a headache… from back there, on the water.”

“You poor thing. Take an Advil.”

“Nah, a cup of hot tea—and off to bed. Lord. Some freaking day we had… I have to say, you seem to be just generally super calm recently. Sort of distanced…”

“I must be slowly developing the ability not to give a damn. What else can I do?”

“No, I’m serious. I noticed it back when you came home from your meeting with Vadym, and I was telling you about Yulichka. Things don’t seem to get to you the way they used to; they don’t affect you as much….”

“Is this a bad thing? That they don’t?”

“Hey. Kiddo. What if you are pregnant?”

“Oy!”

“What’s to oy about? What would be so terrible about that?”

“My dictaphone!”

“What about it?”

“I just saw this… apparently, I left it on—after I erased the stuff…. Or did I not lock it, and it came on accidentally in my purse?”

“You mean, it was recording the whole way home?”

“That’s what I’m telling you, look, it’s on! It’s still rolling…”

“No shi—”

CLICK.

Daryna is sitting on the edge of the bathtub holding the test stick in her fingers—carefully, like a rare insect, a wingless dragonfly with a delicate blue fuselage. She sits and looks, unable to take her eyes off of it: to her, the strip seems to be alive. About to move. Or do something else to reveal itself, something completely unpredictable. Especially since, as the instructions claim, after ten minutes, the reading can disappear. Still, what she is seeing is beyond doubt.